Over the past two weeks we have visited Black Oyster-catcher territories within Laskeek Bay, and have found many of the sites with either eggs or chicks. We have even found chicks large enough to band at two of the sites, which indicates that these birds had a particularly early start.
Overall there are more sites active this year than last, no doubt because of the particularly good weather in May and June. As in past years, we are collecting feed samples at sites to describe chick diets. The most common prey items are limpets, mussels and chitons. We have also completed our census of Glaucous-winged Gulls in Laskeek Bay. The largest by far is Lost Island, where we counted 224 nests. Kingsway Rock, the second largest colony had 36 active nests. Most of the gulls are still on eggs, but we also found several nests with chicks or eggs that were hatching.